Re: BDB selection, et al.

[Quanah Gibson-Mount <quanah@zimbra.com>]

--On Friday, July 18, 2008 9:11 PM -0400 William Jojo <jojowil@hvcc.edu> 
wrote:

> I have noticed that the Symas packages user BDB 4.2 (with 2.3.42) as does
> Ubuntu with 2.4.9+. I was wondering what the preference is over 4.4
> (which I use) and 4.[67].

4.2.52 + patches has the longest history of being solid.

4.3 was a disaster

4.4 was likely okay

4.5 was likely okay

4.6 also seems okay, and has some useful improvements

4.7 is not yet supported, but will be in a future release, and has 
additional useful improvements over 4.6.

> I ask because I build OpenLDAP (among other things) for AIX 5.2/5.3/6.1
> at (shameless plug) http://pware.hvcc.edu/ and I was considering moving
> to 2.4.10 with BDB 4.6, but now I am not certain where to go for a few of
> reasons:
>
> * Why the choice to stay with BDB 4.2?

Proven track record over later releases (4.4, 4.5) for stability and 
performance.

> * And OpenSSL 0.9.7l (over the 0.9.8 series)?

I use OpenSSL 0.9.8 in my builds and have for ages.

> * 2.3.39 has been *stable* since 11/2007 and I have not moved from that
> point within the software suite offered. Is a later version of 2.3 going
> to be marked stable (like 2.3.42.1 is in the Symas prodcut).

Not likely.  Stable is really a fairly meaningless term.  Assigning meaning 
to it as a guideline as to what version to build is a very bad idea. 
There's a major DoS vulnerability in 2.3.39, for example, that was fixed in 
2.3.43 and 2.4.11.

> * 2.4.x seems stable enough to me and certainly to Ubuntu x86[_64], but I
> would like some other indication that I should make the leap before I
> begin to change dependencies to several of the products I produce. Is
> 2.4.x going to be marked stable in the near future?

Hopefully.  Note that stable does not remotely mean bug free (or relatively 
low in bug count).  It simply means stable as far as core (i.e., not new) 
functionality is concerned.  So if your reason for moving to 2.4 was for 
things like MMR, which is new to 2.4, be aware of that.

--Quanah

--

Quanah Gibson-Mount
Principal Software Engineer
Zimbra, Inc
--------------------
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